Mikel Dunham on Patrol with the Nepal Army: Defender of Endangered Species- PART ONE

JUNE 15, 2018

In March 2018, I was embedded with armed patrols in the Bardiya and Chitwan National Parks. I advanced on foot, elephant, jeeps and river rafts to see firsthand the army’s tactical applications for protecting endangered species from human encroachment and poaching. A portion of PART ONE was published in this week's Nepali Times.

Tiger Burning Bright

9 am. It was my first morning in Bardiya National Park, the far-western Nepali jungle reserve where many of the last remaining Bengal Tigers, One-Horned Rhinos, Asian Elephants and other endangered species are free to roam. My mission was to advance with patrols of the army – on foot, in jeeps, in river rafts – to see firsthand the strategies and tactical applications for protecting Nepal’s wildlife preserves from poachers and smugglers.

I was embedded with Bardiya’s Shiva Dal Battalion. The morning began with a briefing by Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Tek Bahadur Chand, after which I headed out with a park conservationist and a dozen armed soldiers (nine men, three women). This was to be a routine military patrol with no surprises anticipated.

Our patrol commenced in bright light while traversing shallow brooks. Sal trees – the dominant tree species in the jungle – soon closed in. Their canopy stonewalled the sun. The track narrowed into a three-foot-wide path, forcing us to fall into single file. Except for the trill of small birds and boot crunch over leaf debris, there was absolute silence.

Thirty minutes into our march, Lt. Bikash Rayamajhi, the patrol leader, came to a halt.

To his right, six feet away, was a fully-grown Bengal tiger. Eye-to-eye contact. The lieutenant froze from the sheer proximity of the beast. A second later, pointing toward the animal, he alerted us: “Baagh.” Tiger.

I was fourth in line. I, too, found myself in shocked suspension. To my right, pushing through a dark green frame of foliage, was a quadrangle of orange fur. Breathing fur. Before I could gather my wits, the tiger roared.

How to explain a tiger’s roar at close quarters…

Ferocity on amps. It’s a deep-throated reverberation that rattles your ears and slams into your chest. The jungle is the tiger’s realm. His roar becomes a three-second lecture on primordial domination. Your spine becomes its sounding board. Your brain becomes its echo chamber. You are an idiotic trespasser. An upstart. A meat slab of inconsequential provenance.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the squad rushing away in both directions. I scrambled after the soldiers to my rear. The last person to see the beast was the hindmost corporal, who glimpsed the tiger vault over hedge, then melt into shadows beyond.

Eventually, in a dappled glade, we regrouped, shaken and probably a little giddy from the unexpected spike of adrenalin. We stared at each other. It wasn’t just I who thought it was a big deal. Most of the squad had never seen wild tiger until that morning. They had been stationed in Bardiya for nearly a year, but tiger encounters were that rare.

One of the soldiers told me that there was a Nepali saying: “If you see a tiger in the wild, it will bring ten years of good luck.”

Maybe, but we were stuck in the moment, unified in our awe of a beast that could have easily mauled or snapped one of our necks. No laughing matter, of course, and yet it was impossible to suppress grins.

“Let’s go,” said the lieutenant. The hook of duty reasserted itself. The soldiers readjusted their rifles and we resumed our patrol through the jungle. Like the tiger’s unsuspected presence, much of the army’s contribution to conservation remains beyond the public’s imagination.

Nepal Army's History of Saving Wildlife

To use the tiger as an example, in the last century, 95% of the world’s Bengal Tiger habitat has disappeared. Depending on one’s source, the tiger population has dwindled to somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000. Their numbers are not recovering in Russia – once a stronghold for tigers – nor in most of Southeast Asia. Cambodia, Vietnam and China have completely lost their viable tiger populations. What remains are a few reserves in Thailand, India and Nepal.

Here’s the good news. Within these reserves, the tiger-population has increased in the last decade.

For a small developing country like Nepal, wildlife recovery is a remarkable achievement. Overcoming its history of slaughterhouse safaris, civil war and limited resources, the nation has every right to take pride in its current tiger tally: nearly 200 as of 2018. In spite of formidable obstacles, the number is growing and the world should take note of Nepal’s success.

Baagh shikar (tiger hunts, or put more bluntly, carnage disguised as “sport” among by-gone kings, maharajas and foreign dignitaries), was banned by Nepal’s government in 1972. In their heyday, baagh shikari (tiger hunters) slaughtered scores of tigers in a single day. After the ban, the government created conservation sanctuaries in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and other non-governmental organizations.

In 1975, the Nepal Army was appointed to work in concert with the conservationists and that changed everything. The army’s collaboration has proven to be one of its most outstanding accomplishments. There are now 20 protected areas in Nepal covering 25% of Nepal’s landmass. The army is responsible for safeguarding 14 of the sanctuaries. In 2018, there are 15 battalions and companies with some 8000 troops protecting forest areas measuring 5,133 square miles.

That’s a lot of prime poaching real-estate, where preferred methods of further endangering species include guns, homemade weapons, covered pits used as traps, poisoning, electric shock, trained dogs – you name it: Murdering animals is a creative business.

Although poaching has always been an issue in Nepal, it spiked in the mid-1990s, when the rise of criminal organizations came into play. The black-market value for rhino horn, elephant tusk, and many other species’ body parts sky-rocketed.

Staying with the tiger for the moment, syndicates found it particularly profitable to catered to nouveau riche Chinese consumers. (Hǔ biān tang is one of the more repugnant examples. It’s a Chinese soup prepared with tiger penis, believed to guarantee virility. There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the claim but, apparently, the Chinese craving for status overrules pharmaceutical facts. Today, the price for this quack-remedy-soup goes for around $400 per bowl in a Beijing restaurant.)

Also, the army’s anti-poaching efforts were severely hampered by the 10-year Maoist insurgency of 1996-2006. By 2000, the civil war had intensified to the point that large numbers of wildlife security forces were re-deployed to confront Maoist-rebel strongholds. Endangered species became defenseless. Likewise, deforestation became rampant. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that between 2000 and 2005, Nepal lost about 1650 square miles of forest cover.

The game-changer was the Comprehensive Peace Accord, signed in 2006.

The truce allowed troops to return to the sanctuaries. Anti-poaching efforts and protection of forests resumed with increased assertiveness. The result has been a dramatic increase in wildlife population and tough curtailment of human encroachment – as the roaring tiger of Bardiya was keen to remind me and my armed comrades.

The Karnali River

Confluence of Neolithic and 21st Century Technology

I and a seven-man armed patrol took two jeeps north of Army Headquarters to the Karnali River. Our drive ran parallel to the Karnali, but considerably above it. We were climbing and traversing – precariously – the southern flank of the Siwalki hills, which constitutes the outermost range of the Himalaya. The narrow grade had been cut out of a stone hillside and, by the time we attained some 500 feet above the river, the water directly below us was technicolor blue-green. The Karnali is the longest and most beautiful watercourse in Nepal: glacier fed, swift moving.

Our eight-man team was led by Lt. Bikash Rayamajhi. We unloaded our gear in the Buffer Zone, slightly north of the Bardiya National Park boundary. We carried our equipment 1/8 of a mile down to a sandy beach. On the other side of the river rose a thirty-foot bluff topped by khair trees. Herons watched in silence as we inflated the rubber raft.

We slid the raft into calm water. Bristling with paddles and firearms, the vessel was a tight fit for eight men. And the tranquility was misleading. A stretch of rapids awaited us not far downstream.

After we pushed off, Lt. Rayamajhi explained that the guardianship of buffer zones is almost as crucial as protecting the interior of the parks. Overseen by the country’s Buffer Zone Management Committee, Nepal Army acts as its boots-on-the-ground steward.

Cooperation from local villagers is vital. 50% of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation’s revenue comes from tourism, which is distributed to buffer-zone communities.

This is an important point. Sharing the tourism revenue encourages the natives to be more reliant on economic activities within their sectors, rather than illegally exploiting the natural resources inside the national parks. These and other strategies have proven to be effective.

Of course, community activism can never entirely preclude poaching, nor local animosity. I witnessed hostility downstream, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

The primary purpose of our raft patrol was to scout for clues of unwelcomed fishing. Bunched-up nets hidden among riverbank boulders was one give-away. When the locals cast these nets, they not only capture golden mahseer (carp) and catfish for food, they may also inadvertently entrap endangered aquatic species. At the top of the list is the Ganges River Dolphin.

Once endemic to Nepal, India and Bangladesh, the population of Ganges River dolphins has dwindled to fewer than 2,000 left in the wild, out of which fewer than 100 dolphins still swim Nepali waters. Decimated populations have been caused by incidental by-catches in fishing gear, deliberate killings for dolphin oil, reduction of natural prey, degradation of surrounding land, and damming of rivers for hydropower and irrigation. (It’s important to note that the Karnali is the only significant river in Nepal that has so far eluded damming, but that could change in the near future. There are at least four Karnali hydropower projects currently in pre-development.)

Our boat traversed the breadth of the Karnali, back and forth. (Armed raft patrols are irregularly scheduled to maintain the element of surprise.) My eagle-eyed companions spotted, then confiscated nets along and above the shorelines. We stored them under our feet, shoved off from the embankments and moved on.

At one point, two fishermen came rushing down from a steep bluff punching their fists in the air and hurtling insults at us. There was a rock ledge that slanted down to our landing spot, but the men stopped short of nearing the raft. The patrol didn’t seem unduly concerned. To be sure, they were attentive but their firearms remained cradled in their laps. What could the fishermen do but spew condemnation as we receded into the distance, their confiscated gear securely weighted down by our boots? On the one hand, I sympathized with the two guys, whose meager income relied solely on fishing. On the other hand, they had seen the army’s tactics before: Had I been in their place, I would have taken the precaution of hiding my nets in the forest above.

The river grew much wider downstream, almost a third-of-a-mile across. Except for the plunge of oars, silence prevailed. No motorboats to break the silence or pollute the water, I observed with great satisfaction. And just when I had convinced myself that I had been transported into a world free from 21st century intrusion, the magnificent steel contours of the Karnali Bridge rose into view.

The bridge is single-towered, cable-stayed and spans 1640 feet. It is the longest of its type in Nepal, built with Japanese assistance. We paddled under the bridge’s beautiful contours, where a dozen or so dugouts bobbled in and out of the span’s shadow.

15-20 feet long, dugouts are sculpted from single tree trunks. They are the oldest boats yet discovered by paleontologist, dating back to 8000 years ago.

The juxtaposition of the lofty bridge and Stone Age dugouts caught me off-guard. It reminded me that, in spite of modern technology, Nepal remained harnessed to antiquity. It’s one of the charms – some would say curses – of Nepal. I was rooting for a Nepal that could develop without losing its ancient heritage. “At least there are no motorboats,” I murmured to Lt. Rayamajhi.

“Oh, the Karnali has motorboats. It’s one of the reasons river dolphins are so few, especially this far downstream.”

So much for naïve American pastoralism.

To what extent will technology be able to work hand-in-hand with Nepali tradition? The pace and parameters of change will determine the well-being of Nepal’s inherited wild kingdom.

A balance is possible, however. I saw this in the way the military collaborated with conservationists with the help of technology. And nowhere was this more evident than at Chitwan National Park, the next sanctuary I would visit as a guest of the Nepal Army.

To be continued...PART TWO will be posted June 18th and PART THREE will be posted June 21st.